WttSS session 46: 'Nasralleh Makes His Move'

Session report - Whispers to the Star Singer campaign

Written by Doctor Weather

General Summary

The Great Caravan and the party had found themselves both under attack from Professor Nasralleh's Legion forces. Initially, Nasralleh had demanded Zarzur open the door to the City of Brass or he'd destroy the Great Caravan and the Harir 5th had already started the assault, angry as they were with the party and the Xinghur for the Legion losses inflicted already. Warleader Ta-Nehisi reported that the Xinghur were dug in but had Legionaries on all sides. Kerman and the warleader agreed that both the party and the caravan were on their own for now.
In the broken landscape of the other place, Zarzur stood over a worried image of herself that had withdrawn as she asked it for help. Her body meanwhile, was still overlooked by the same two pillars as the rest of the party, each pillar shining their nine white lights down on the scene. The party were not as helpless as she though, and indeed Khalil ended negotiations with the Orb of Ghodar, calling out 6 Legionaries and "hate".
GM note: the entire session was combat, so rather than write it out play by play, I'l summarise here the highlights by PC and then cover the ending.

Khalil

Khalil started the fight - and almost finished it too - but most of his time was taken up with running between 'rock monsters'. These were the same ones that the party encountered at the Crossroads but here they were grey-gold instead of sandstone - each time their colour has matched the rock they were found in.
The Orb of Ghodar tactic worked but grabbed the 3 Legionaries on the righthand side of the chamber that Khalil could see but a further 3 hiding on the same ledge rather than heading off to the left to collect the other visible opponents. With a number of successes that only a Portal Builder artefact would expect to reach, all 6 succumbed to the 'hate' and collapsed. One or 2 may still be alive...
The pillars then flashed and turned off the orb and it seemed to bounce off something in mid-air instead of returning to Khalil. It fell into the rocks below and this is when the rock monsters started to appear, wanting to confiscate the orb. At the highest point, Khalil was dodging between four of them, too swift to be hit or captured, and the rock creatures used their combined power to shake the chamber floor to try and knock Khalil off his feet instead. In the end, it was this vibration that broke the pillars' stability, causing them to break.
A point of note in the chase was Khalil attempting to use poetry and his connection to the orb to awaken it again and summon it back to his hand. The orb could never be awoken again whilst the pillars were active but the orb did at least roll slowly over the ground towards him at one point, showing the power of poetry to focus thought and energy.

Zarzur

Zarzur had trouble the other place. She didn't want to risk attracting the attention of the shadow in the sundered peaks - any more than had already been done: The stronger the emotion of the speech in the real world, the more their words carried into the dreamscape and Khalil's shout of hate came through very clearly, causing the shadow to take notice. Moreover, with the other her being keen for her not to tamper with the dreamscape she was left with the feeling that better to leave well alone.
GM note on how he thinks he did this wrong: Zarzur's headpiece - in fact her whole creation by Nasralleh - gave her the power to completely command and control the dreamscape but I think I managed to talk her out of doing anything by making it seem so risky and perhaps seemingly without benefit. This is one for me for similar situations another time.
Zarzur chose to leave the dreamscape, not forcing her way out with her power but by influencing it with her mind. (Subtly/crucially, this meant still using her headpiece but with her data djinn skill and not her Darkness-Point-creating mystic power.) Fearing this escape would harm the system, the other Zarzur fought against it. Zarzur still escaped but the combat extended the pre-existing cracks in one of the pillars.
Back out in the real world, Zarzur found a heavily combat going with the rest of the party, covering pretty much the entire space they were in, but as Nasralleh had ordered Zarzur kept safe, everyone had been careful to keep her unconscious body from harm. She snuck around the worst of the fighting and helped Kerman out with a sneaky backstab on a Legionary. It didn't penetrate his armour but did let her push him into the path of an oncoming rock monster.

Murad

Murad was the first to discover that guns didn’t work in the chamber, the pillars’ lights flashing as he tried to use one against the remaining Legionaries on the lefthand side. This also explained why the Legion snipers had started to put their guns down – they knew this was coming. Nonetheless, Murad still managed to engage the Legionaries with the help of Kerman’s hyper-rope, scaling the wall with ease. Though some of the Legionaries had Saladin grape cannons to fire – primitive weapons that still functioned – they were under orders not to attack Murad too if they could help it.
Three Legionaries who hadn’t fired grape guns made use of their wingsuits to leap off and engage the party below before Murad reached the ledge but when he got there, he turned his kharatuk blade into two swords and charged the remainder. In two consecutive displays of disturbingly high competence, he dealt with all three soldiers.
In outmanoeuvring the first he also took advantage of the fact the Legionaries were in the process of gathering up some detonators. At the end of the manoeuvre, the first Legionary had managed to keep all the detonators safe from Murad by gathering them all up but found himself in great despair when Murad slid around him, destroyed his exo’s wings and backheeled the Legionary off the ledge.
The remaining two wouldn't have fared much better and so also jumped from the ledge, preferring to face Kerman on the floor below.
GM note: I’d planned to get party and enemies alike having to protect Zarzur’s body but it never happened. The detonators were the starting point from which I intended to create threats with DP but that didn’t come off and Khalil’s dance around the rock monsters kept her safe. I could bemoan the situation and say I should’ve used more DP to create trouble but to be honest, the party did so well to shut the Legionaries down, perhaps they deserved not to have further threats…?

Masruq

Masruq probably thought he’d have the worst time of it, being potentially the least melee-ready of the party, but acquitted himself marvellously then, all considering. With a good command roll at the start he set the other characters up well and then only actually took damage from the grape guns. When the wingsuit Legionaries dropped to face the party, Masruq drew his Al Sharaf blade and stepped boldly forward. This suggested to the Legionary commander that a duel of commanders was to be had and a robed, Al Sharaf blade wielder faced off against the dura-blade of a combat exo-suit. This, combined with their comparative skill levels, should have meant the fight went just one way and real fast… but it didn’t. In fact, the Icons must have been with Masruq, as all the success went to him and none to the Legionary. Halfway through the duel, Kerman did provide an extra few dice with a command of his own to “stop messing about and kill the guy” but that alone couldn’t explain the exchange, by the end of which, Masruq was left standing with no further wounds and the Legionary was on the floor, his blade broken. Even in Darkness, the Icons watch over us.

Kerman

Kerman bore the brunt of the Legionary attacks and the attention of the Darkness. With Khalil in the middle of rock monsters, Masruq duelling their commander and the other PCs off limits to attack, four Legionaries bore down on Kerman through the fight. Worse for him than the Legionaries though, was definitely the attention of the Darkness, which delighted in Kerman’s new personal problem of needing to play for the crowd. Had indeed there have been a real crowd here they would already have been looking the other way at Murad’s displays that used the inspiration of the Dancer itself to move him through his enemies to victory, unscathed. They would also have been rightly impressed by Zarzur’s manoeuvres against a suited enemy twice her size. They might have paid more attention to Kerman during this but he was caught in a stalemate. To be fair to him, he was vastly outnumbered and keeping all enemies locked down. This prevented them from attacking the rest of the party… But he wasn’t wining in the traditional sense and the Darkness teased at the corners of his mind because of it. Finally, in one powerful move he grabbed two Legionaries in mid-wingsuit-dive and back peddled their momentum into the other two and the rock monster that Zarzur had embroiled in the affair, creating a stunned pile of combatants. The Darkness may have put him at the bottom of the pile but this only meant he could burst from it, dura-blade cleaving a path through the bodies to bring him victorious to see the work of the rest of the party before him.

Yochanan

During all of this, the pillars had slowly been taking damage. They were already cracked when the party arrived but then they had to expend more energy nullifying dangerous weapons, had suffered from the conflict with Zarzur and then finally, under the shaking of the ‘rock monsters’ the righthand pillar gave way. Its existing cracks grew and shattered some of its lights and the energy fields controlling the chamber fell away.
Such an effect also finally drew the attention of the spirit of the sorcerer Yochanan and he appeared in the chamber as a heaviness to the air that weighed particularly on the shoulders of Masruq, him being more sensitive to spirits. With a cry of “who comes to play with my toys”, the new power of a Yochanan who’d been within a City of Brass further shook the ground and shattered the remaining rock monsters. Still unable to inhabit the world of the flesh, his power to affect the metal and mineral world was only enhanced.
Khalil tried to capture Yochanan in an enhanced spirit box but the sorcerer’s power was now much beyond it. Though he was still drawn towards the box, it took him little effort to destroy it. However, two other characters still had the power to affect him.
The other Zarzur from the other place called to her once more and in a desperate plea, asked Zarzur to shut it all down. Calling on her power, she used her headpiece to connect back to the dreamscape and turned it off. For a brief moment Zarzur became aware of a thousand other Zarzur’s in other places beyond the broken landscape.
The lights of both pillars faded and they slowly descended to the floor. This lock removed, another light then erupted into the air between them, dangerously bright. Pure only for a microsecond, it quickly shattered, refracting as if through a thousand and one diamonds before settling into a planet-bound portal, gently hanging in place.
But with Yochanan still present, Masruq still had a job to do. Knowing his power to cast spirits out of things would likely destroy the chamber and perhaps even the portal, through Yochanan’s corruption, which left only one other choice: pull Yochanan within him. Channelling the spirit through the motions of his off hand, Masruq drew the sorcerer down but as the Abouelkassem spirits could no longer inhabit human bodies, Masruq was forced to cast his enemy somewhere.
He chose the exo-suit of the downed Legionary commander, who was looking up in horror. Both Masruq’s hand and the exo-suit were broken backwards and forwards in a thousand places. Masruq dropped to the floor in pain. The Legionary did not move again.
But the door is now open…

23rd day of the Deckhand
Campaign: Contract: Whispers to the Star Singer
Characters: PC group: Whispers to the Star Singer
Timeline: Campaign timeline: Whispers to the Star Singer

Campaign

Whispers to the Star Singer (concluded)

Protagonists

Report Date

24 Mar 2022

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Contents

• General Summary
• Khalil
• Zarzur
• Kerman
• Murad
• Masruq
• Yochanan